Last night I experienced my first dialysis crash. I developed severe cramps in my legs and hands. When I stood up to relieve my leg cramps, my blood pressure dropped more than 50 points in a matter of seconds and I almost passed out. I felt like I was uncontrollably falling into a deep, dark, bottomless hole. I recovered quickly enough but it left me shaken for several hours. Crashes are relatively common in dialysis patients, but this was my first.
The dialysis staff did nothing wrong to cause the crash; if I hadn’t been talking to one of the nurses at the onset of the crash—and if she hadn’t responded as quickly as she did—it could have been a lot worse.
My legs cramp during most every dialysis run and I figure it’s just part of the disease. The cramps are very painful but they pass after a minute or so. Cramps are a result of pulling so much fluid from my body so quickly. For me, between 4 and 5 kilograms of fluid are removed from my body over a period of 4 hours during each dialysis run. The process almost always leaves me exhausted and disoriented.
As a result of all of this I find myself vacillating between fear and anger. Fear of what might happen and anger at what has. Even worse, I worry continually about how all of this impacts my wife, Karen. Just when I think I’ve gotten a handle on how to deal with this disease, something happens like a whack on the head to make me aware that I haven’t a clue.
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